The Christmas Bells That Ring There
by SombraAlma
Summary: This Christmas is different than most, for Flight 815's families as well as the survivors.


Title: The Christmas Bells That Ring There  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Don't own them; just borrowing.  
Spoilers: Through the Looking Glass  
Summary: This Christmas is different than most, for Flight 815's families as well as the survivors.  
Notes: Something different, an attempt to write people I've never written before. This is for lostfichallenge #62: happy holidays. Lyrics/title from Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmastime At All?"

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Margo Shephard is not celebrating Christmas this year. She ignores the disapproving glares she receives from her neighbors, who have all decorated their houses as if opulence were a holy sacrament. The way she's done (or rather, had her gardener do) for the past twenty years. The way she's refused to do this year. What's the point, she wonders, of keeping up appearances anymore? She's never been fond of the holiday, anyway.

She actually manages to forget, for one night, that there's anything different about this date, the twenty-fifth of December. She shuts the heavy blinds tightly against the colorful lights, wraps herself in a blanket, and starts in on the bottles that have lined her pantry for three months. It was a cruel irony that prompted acquaintances and colleagues to send scotch and whiskey as condolences to Christian Shephard's widow, but she hadn't questioned it then and isn't going to start now.

It's hours later when her son comes to her in her drunkard's dreams; Jack, a child again. Alive and vibrant as only she can remember him, and his clear boy's voice sings to her as if he's standing just beside the couch. _Round yon virgin, mother and child, holy infant, so tender and mild...Sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace._

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It's Christmas morning when Clementine Phillips first asks about her daddy. She looks up from the dollhouse she's just opened, looks up from the family of dolls she's placed carefully in the rooms. "Mama, where's my daddy?" She takes the father doll out of the living room and places him on the front porch instead.

Cassidy knew the dolls had been a mistake. "Honey, you know Mama hasn't seen your daddy in a long time."

"But where _is_ he?"

Cassidy watches her daughter move the small figure again, from the porch to the backyard. She recalls the Dateline special that had run several nights before, on the three-month anniversary of Flight 815's disappearance. A holiday memorial to the dead. And she realizes that now, Clementine can have any kind of daddy Cassidy can dream up for her. No one ever dreams up a conman who denies his part in making a little girl with dimples that could only be his.

"Clemmy, your daddy loved you so much. But he had to go on a long trip..."

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Carmen Reyes has never believed her Hugo is dead. The other parishioners give her a wide berth when she arrives for Midnight Mass. They smile sadly as she kneels and crosses herself, murmur to each other as she lights a candle and prays to Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. They'd feel better if she'd pray to Saint Jude for her lost cause, but it's always Christopher, as if Hugo is just on a long layover somewhere.

She sits among the congregation and hears for the millionth time about the Virgin Mother, the birth of the Holy Child, but for the first time in her life, her mind wanders from the story of the first Christmas. And instead she's remembering Hugo, tiny and red-faced and screaming on her chest for the first time. She thinks of the sudden, hot swell of love she'd felt, and she_knows_.

She knows if her Hugo were dead, she'd have felt it.

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On Christmas Eve, Liam Pace gets high for the first time in three years.

There are presents under the tree and Megan has gone to bed early with the anticipation of Santa's visit, the hope of Christmas morning snow. Liam kisses his daughter's forehead and knows when he leaves their house that this is a mistake, but he can't turn back.

He wastes no time snorting their Christmas dinner money away in the dark pub bathroom. The familiar burn, the resulting heady swirling in his mind, doesn't do enough to make him forget. Instead, he can't get it out of his head – another Christmas, another lifetime. Giving Charlie his ring.

Should have saved it for Megan, instead. But how was he supposed to know his baby brother would go and get himself crashed in the bloody ocean?

Liam stumbles out into the pub again and makes a beeline to the jukebox. He stays there for the rest of the night, cursing Christmas as Charlie's voice fills the room.

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_There's a world outside your window  
And it's a world of dread and fear  
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears_

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Hurley wonders if any of the other survivors remember that it's Christmas. The mood on the beach is surely festive enough, and he has to figure the promise of rescue is the best present any of them has ever received. He wonders if there's enough food left from the last drop to have a holiday feast of sorts.

"Hey, dude...Sayid!" He hurries towards the Iraqi, but before he can lay out his quickly forming plan, both men turn, alerted by a shout from down the beach.

"Dude..." Hurley breathes the word in relief and awe as he sees Desmond stumbling onto the beach from the ocean, and there's a rush towards the man as the other survivors run to meet him.

Hurley follows, but stops in his tracks when he sees Claire approach Desmond, then crumple to the sand.

He hears a sudden sound and it takes him several moments to realize she's screaming.

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_And the Christmas bells that ring there  
Are the clanging chimes of doom  
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you _


End file.
